a mailman nearing retirement laments that he will miss reading the series anonymous love letters that have made their way to his “dead letter file” over the years.

a frazzled therapist leaves her abusive husband to start a new small town life.

an infamous, preppy, womanizing, frat boy-bigot-turned-radio-personality goes missing, and nobody seems to mind.

a beloved former school teacher with a mysterious past opens up an unconventional smoking cessation clinic.

these are a few of the eccentric characters in jill mccorkle‘s carolina moon, a 1996 national bestseller that made its perfectly-timed entrance into my world just a few weeks ago.

i enjoyed the book, which is no surprise given that mccorkle considers lee smith to be her mentor and harper lee’s to kill a mockingbird to be the supreme example of literary genius. but the real gift to me was the interview with the author included in the back of the book. about the structure of carolina moon, an interwoven collection of narratives and letters voiced and penned by a handful of bizarre characters, the interviewer asks,

“the structure of this novel is perhaps its most striking aspect; reviewers seem to either applaud its ingenuity or criticize it as confusing. if you could do it over again, would you have changed the way you handled the plot structure?”

to this question, mccorkle replies,

“no. it really is the novel I wanted to write. if I had had the luxury of an everyday writing schedule it might have turned out differently, but this novel was written during a very busy time and there was no way for me to shape the story as if it was one big lump of clay. i was making tiny little pictures and hoping that eventually they would all connect.”

as someone who writes sermons during a “very busy time,” and as someone who dreams of publishing a book someday, i was simultaneously inspired by mccorkle’s answer and curious as to what she was doing in the years preceding the 1996 publication. could she have perhaps been the mother of small children?

i found my answer on the writers write internet writing journal, where in a 2000 interview mccorkle explained,

“before my children were born, i had the luxury of–if not a daily schedule–at least a more structured schedule. now i just write whenever i can get the time. i’m constantly taking notes and writing smidgets of things, because, in desperation, that’s the only way i can get there.”

well jill, (can I call you jill?), thank you for this bit of honesty. clearly you “got there,” and so then just maybe i can get there too.

maybe we can all get there, whether we have writing aspirations or not. after all, aren’t we all, as mothers, simply making tiny little pictures and hoping that eventually they will all connect?

[for publication information about carolina moon, see the bibliography page located on the sidebar to your right.]